Fourth Anniversary of this Blog

May 15th is the fourth anniversary of writing this blog. I have written over 2000 posts, and over 91% of them have been published. I have developed a style of mixing photos and text that I'm comfortable with. I've learned that Facebook URLs on the timeline are temporary and how to get permanent ones. I generally have spent several hours each day, seven days a week researching and writing. I even spend time proof reading, believe or not. It has done what I had hoped, allowed me to learn a lot and act as a memory aid.

I soon started another blog, https://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/, where I write about topics that are out of the Chicagoland area.

I continue to find information faster than I can deal with it. I have another blog, https://dldreference.blogspot.com/, where I dump links for topics that I don't have time to pursue now. (See the "links" label.)

I started another blog, https://dldconstruction.blogspot.com/, to save all of the photos I have been taking since last Summer of construction activity near downtown Downers Grove, IL; but I'm waaaay behind on that one.

Unfortunately, it is also the six-week anniversary of Google's "author keyword search function" breaking. I have used the Feedback button Google provides on the author's page, but it seems to be the equivalent of a suggestion box sitting over a paper shredder. Or what we called at work a "bit bucket." That is, I have received no response to my complaint about the search function breaking. A moral of the story might be: don't write over 2000 posts in a single blog because Google can't handle it.

I've been able to find most of my posts using either a label or a cross-reference from another post. But I've started a list of posts that I can't update because I can't find them such as "smoking locomotives." Even when I can find a post, it takes time guessing and goofing about labels or cross-referenced posts. On April 5th, I tried cutting back on the blog writing, but I went through withdrawal.

I have used keywords in the titles such as MoW:, MWRD:, IH:, etc. so that I could find posts using the author's search function. Since I can no longer trust the search results for those keywords, I may try reducing my blog writing again. We shall see.




Just today I can't find my posting on "shoving platforms." I've added that to a list of "lost posts" that includes information on edits I want to make for each lost posting.